The high, crystalline voice of the baby made the dust fall off the mirrors and, for a few seconds, calmed the wrath of drunken clients. As soon as they started flashing their knives, Jashe would come down with Sara Felicidad so she could sing “Canción Mixteca,” thus transforming rage into nostalgia and then into beatitude. The bestial masks would fall off, and the little boy faces would appear.
Meanwhile, Alejandro, who remained blind and deaf to the fact of his daughter, was beginning to lose hope about the realization of his dance. Whenever a girl managed to learn the intricate steps, she would fall in love, get married, become pregnant, and abandon art forever. If it was a young man, he would get his law or architecture degree, or kill himself, or run off with some low-class lover and his mother’s jewels. He would get furious over nothing, a slice of apple with a seed in it, someone looking distracted when he was speaking about his problems with the dancers. He would threaten to beat his wife to a pulp. Then he would fall to his knees to kiss her feet, begging forgiveness. One day, at three in the afternoon, his breakfast time, Yumo Melnik burst into the dining room, waving a blue telegram:
“Girls, eat quickly and run to fix yourselves up and slip into your sexiest clothes! Two hours from now, the chief of police, Roberto Falcón, will honor us with a visit! He’s coming to throw a party for his twenty bodyguards. Every year, as a bonus, the chief grants them a wish. This year they asked to screw Jewish whores. Dearhearts, you are model professionals. It’s extremely important for the future of our business that you not reject any whim. They are murderers, yes, of course, but they see sex like boys. If you don’t contradict them and give in, smiling to their oddities, they will become as tame as little lambs. And swallow these pills, which will keep you awake until the stiffest pricks collapse!”
Simón Radovitzky, his face solemn, went over to Marla, taking advantage of the fact that she was drinking her coffee in the shadow because daylight irritated her eyes.
“Marla, I know you’re going to be very busy with those killers. Even so, and with the greatest respect, I’m going to ask a favor. My life won’t be long. Maybe it will be over before the sun comes up tomorrow. Don’t interrupt me, please! What I’m telling you is serious, because I’m talking to you as if I were sentenced to death. Look: in this jacket I have all the money I’ve been able to save. I’m giving it to you. It’s more than you earn in a month of work. Initiate me, Marla! I’m a virgin. Make me a man. I want to learn in the two hours we have before the police come the depth of pleasure, to pour out the semen of an entire life, to fornicate in different positions and through all doors, to give you my heart like an animal on the sacrificial altar. I want my spirit to bury itself in yours and die there so that later they shoot what is only an empty body. Oh, Marla, forgive me. I think I love you.”
The prostitute said nothing. She slowly put the money into her black satin bag, finished her coffee, took Simón by the hand, led him to the third floor where he entered the room decorated like an underwater grotto, stripped him, bathed him in the big marble conch, dried him with a towel cut in the shape of a sardine, got into bed with him under silk sheets stamped with breaking waves, and gave herself to him in body and soul.
After those two hours, a different Simón Radovitzky walked down the stairs. The adolescent had become a mature man. His footsteps were heavy, intense, decisive, but his eyes were veiled, like those of a dead man. He sat down next to the armoire filled with clean sheets and waited with the patient calm of a dog sleeping in the shade on a summer day. Roberto Falcón offered his followers a party without limits. They devoured three roast pigs and emptied uncountable bottles of brandy. While they danced the house tango, they allowed themselves to tear the dresses and underpants of their partners, to carry them again and again to the private rooms. Finally, staggering, they possessed them right there in front of everybody, on the salon carpet or on the bar chairs. Falcón drank, accompanied by his driver, without touching the girls. When he saw all of them awkwardly go through the motions like swings, fall, vomit, and snore in surfeit, their testicles empty down to the last drop, he made a sign to the boy with the Greek profile, and the two of them, with the discretion of shadows, locked themselves away in the preferential suite on the second floor.
Marla, squashed under an orangutan who’d wet his pants, saw Simón, barefoot, make his way up the stairs and enter the luxurious apartment. She felt her heart was breaking, forever, like a crystal vase, and she bit her lips trying not to sob. A red drop slipped down her chin until it fell into the open mouth of the hairy client who, without waking up, savored it smiling. The next day, she would have her left breast tattooed with the letters S.R.
Simón committed the first murder in ten seconds. Falcón was on his knees, with his head buried in a pillow, while his assistant penetrated him, giving rapid and violent thrusts of his hips. The shrieks of pleasure-pain silenced the steps of the anarchist, who, with a wisdom derived from his animal nature, cut the lover’s jugular vein with one slice of a kitchen knife. He did it so decisively that he almost separated the head from the body, and without stopping, like the harmonious continuation of the same movement, drove the knife between the two bodies and cut off the driver’s member, which remained stuck in the chief’s anus. While the body fell, pouring out bright red spurts, Simón put the knife in his other hand, took out his revolver, and pointed it at Falcón: “Don’t scream or I’ll blow your brains out! Stand up in front of me, because I’m your death, faggot!”
The colonel, whiter than the corpse of his lover, stood up next to the bed. The piece of phallus slid out of his anus and, with a watery noise, fell between his feet like a mollusk without a shell. He vomited.
“Lick up your garbage!”
Falcón went down on his knees and passed his tongue over his puke.
“Swine! I should give you a contemptible end, stick this knife into that stinking hole and open you up right to your guts, pull out your tripes, and tie you with them to your boyfriend, then break your skull, empty out your brain and shit in it, as if it were a toilet bowl! Give thanks to anarchism, you moral dwarf. I don’t want to dishonor my comrades by exterminating you with the same viciousness you used to torture and murder so many innocent workers just to satisfy your vanity. I’ll give you a clean ending.”
“Have mercy. A sack of diamonds for my life.”
“You’re mistaken, colonel. I’ve always wanted to live in noble poverty,” Simón answered with a sweet smile and killed him with a perfect shot right between the eyes. Then he sat down opposite the two dead men, put a finger in the pool of blood, and drew the A of Anarchy on his forehead. The bodyguards, aroused by the shot, quickly kicked open the door. Radovitzky was beaten to a pulp — broken nose, three broken ribs, and six broken teeth. They dragged him down to the bar and tortured him in front of the prostitutes. Even though they slowly but surely ripped off all his skin, he died without betraying any member of his group. The police arrested all the witnesses, cursing them the whole time.
The crime stirred public opinion. The authorities blamed the Jewish community, especially the Russian immigrants: “The government is firmly resolved to take energetic measures to avoid the entry into this country of dangerous people and to eliminate those found here.” This the new chief of police declared, and protected by the state of siege, began a search for anarchist leaders among the non-naturalized Jews. By virtue of the Residence Law, several hundred were expelled from the country. Among them were the Melnik brothers and their whores, who, without a cent (the police had confiscated their savings as the price they’d have to pay for the “favor” of not sending them back to Russia), were put on a train that took them directly to Uruguay.